Last year, South Africa ‘played chicken’ with the US, which threatened to withdraw some of the country’s preferential trade access under the African Growth and Opportunity Act unless restraints on American chicken imports were eased. This year, attention has turned to the European Union, whose poultry exports to South Africa are said to be threatening the industry and the people it employs. So it may be the ‘Year of the Rooster’ in some Asian countries, but locally we are having ‘years and years of the chicken’.